Prairie Style Woodwork

Wright's architectural career in tandem with rise of the Prairie School…”

When Frank Lloyd Wright stepped off the train in Chicago in1887 from his home in Wisconsin, he was nineteen years old and the city was bursting with creative energy and architectural opportunity. In the years following the destructive fire of 1871 a massive construction boom was under way. Suburbs were expanding, and a fresh crop of businesspeople was finding success in the Midwest's thriving economy.

It was during this heady time when Wright's architectural career unfolded in tandem with the rise of the Prairie School and Wright became the movement's chief practitioner and most dynamic spokesman. Yet all across the city, young architects were reexamining American home design. Like Wright, they produced an exceptional body of work. But unlike Wright-still the world's most famous architect long after his death-they have remained in relative obscurity, their buildings, furnishings, art glass, and ornament routinely mistaken for his. Only recently has the work of George Grant Elmslie, William Gray Purcell, Walter Burley Griffin, Marion Mahony, Robert Spencer, Barry Byrne, William Drummond, John Van Bergen, Vernon Watson, Thomas E. Tallmadge, George Maher, and others emerged from Wright's long shadow. The visionary Chicago architect Louis Sullivan inspired a generation of these young designers with his ideas about nature and design, urging them to seek an indigenous architecture that grew as naturally and logically from the dynamic Chicago market place as an oak tree emerges from the acorn.

Sullivan applied these concepts to that iconoclastic Midwestern symbol of progress, the skyscraper.

It was Wright, working for Sullivan for nearly six years and his most illustrious protégé who led the search for a new form for the American home. After breaking with Sullivan in 1893, Wright took an office in Chicago, eventually moving to Steinway Hall, where the architects Dwight Perkins, Robert Spencer, and Myron Hunt also worked. At the age of twenty-six, Wright made a gigantic leap toward rein¬venting the traditional house with his first independent commission: the1893 Winslow House in River Forest, Illinois. Its simple facade and honest treatment of materials represented a rejection of standard nineteenth-century building methods. The design was so unusual that William Winslow, claimed Wright, had to sneak out to the train station to avoid his neighbors' derision. Emerging as the group's natural leader, Wright built a studio alongside his Oak Park, Illinois, home in 1898 and invited some of the brightest young talent to join him there. According to prevailing accounts, the new studio, although informal and congenial, was no democracy as Wright aggressively became the principle practitioner of the Prairie School.

The Evolving ‘Prairie’ style required custom designed and built woodwork

abaico builds custom cabinetry and built-in furniture so it is that which concern to us and the focus of this part of the article. It interesting to discover that most ready-made furniture was incompatible with Prairie architecture as it developed around Chicago a hundred years ago, and our clients tell us that still, most ready-made furnishings are not appropriate for modern homes around Chicago in this day and age of cheap imports and knock-off items.

Much of what was available, lamented Frank Lloyd Wright in 1908, was "senselessly ornate," and it pained him to see clients drag offensive, poorly constructed furniture into his houses. So Prairie architects designed their own, striving for graceful, simple pieces suitable for informal living. Each element, from a built-in cabinet or window seat to a light fixture or chair, was conceived as an integral part of the overall design—an extension of the house itself!

Using the same materials and ornamental detailing for both house and furnishings lent integrity to the whole and guaranteed artistic harmony. This is always our goal when we get the opportunity and the heart of our vision of service to our clients in Chicago in the year 2007 at abaico. A hundred years after Mr. Wright guided the emergence of the Prairie School we (the Chicago design community) design and build stylized architectural solutions for discerning Midwest homeowners in the tradition of the Prairie School.

Prairie furnishings, like the architecture, were carefully crafted to emphasize a tranquil, horizontal line. Tabletops and other horizontal planes were cantilevered beyond their supports and often rested on massive legs, creating the illusion that the furnishings, like the house itself, were grounded to the site. This feel of clean but generous thickness is present today in our local designer’s work here (in Chicago) which is often built by abaico. Please see the built-in shelving section of the site.

Squared spindles were incorporated into banisters and used in screen-like room dividers and chair backs. Art glass patterns in built-in sideboards and bookcases related to window patterns. Each of these details are part of discussions on quality projects every week at abai. Reaching for quality is no different now than ever. Our designer friends doing chairs, sofas, and other furnishings still follow a theme based on a geometric shape, generally rectilinear, found in the floor plan, repeated throughout the millwork and custom pieces. Textiles of course were of natural materials such as linen, cotton, and wool, but all in plain weaves, some were embellished with simple embroidery. The Prairie house was a model of restraint and harmony. The modern home should try and do the same. Note the classy integration of the bookcases shown below, nested into the wall on one side-they are a room divider as well on the other, and clearly were designed into the concept from the onset, not built as an after thought.

_{A rare look at surviving a built-in, Prairie Style library bookcases with Art Glass AND leaded clear glass-way cool.}

Much Prairie-style furniture was created under the supervision of the designer George Mann Niedecken through his studio in Milwaukee. From concepts supplied by the architects, he would prepare working drawings, guide color selection, oversee manufacture, supervise installation, and occasionally design furniture as well.

When clients could not afford custom designs, the Mission and Craftsman-style furniture of Gustav Stickley and other Arts and Crafts pieces would do.

The unadorned surfaces and clean geometric lines of Mission and Stickley suited the Prairie house well. But with the exception of Wright's work, only a few original Prairie furnishings, primarily built-in cabinets, bookcases, and light fixtures, still exist. Some freestanding pieces by Niedecken, Walter Burley Griffin, Marion Mahony, Purcell and Elmslie, George Maher, Barry Byrne, and others remain but are rarely in their original settings.

Many Prairie house owners today choose either vintage Mission pieces or recent reproductions to furnish their homes. Many more typical home owners choose replications by abaico. We custom re-design a classic piece or kitchen and then build it with more than just a nod to the style of the original masters. You may prefer to have a look at a modern designer’s work on display at the Merchandise Mart. Then after finding a piece you want, bring us the specs and build something similar at abaico. You'll get it for around half of the price you would pay at the Mart. Contact your project manager or me, Steven Brent (312) 730-7301 for details and examples.

_{Load Bearing Columns in the Prairie Style (note the stair balusters)}